U.S. judge blocks Twitter's bid to reveal government surveillance requests • Hacker News Board

Re: U.S. judge blocks Twitter's bid to reveal government surveillance requests

#131

Post by colordrops » Sat, Apr 18, 2020, 5:08 PM UTC

sneak wrote: post #4

Can we just ponder for a moment that we are being asked to believe that anything Twitter does or does not do could pose an existential threat to the United States? “National security” is a sham now and has been a sham every other time it has ever been used as a blanket override for human rights. Human rights to free expression are more important than any nation. This is just government spies trying to cover their ass…

It's amazing how many times the Patriot Act has been renewed beyond expiration.

Re: U.S. judge blocks Twitter's bid to reveal government surveillance requests

#132

Post by sneak » Sat, Apr 18, 2020, 5:21 PM UTC

TeMPOraL wrote: post #122

JoeSmithson wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I'm following their logic correctly, you cannot justify looking at someone's Twitter DMs to stop a nuclear attack on a city

You can - with a targeted warrant. The part where it requires a sign-off from a judge is literally the moment where you justify looking at someone's Twitter DM. (In rare (non-existing?) cases when warrant-based workflow is too slow, when you need access right fucking now , I think it would make sense to have self-issued warrants available as an option to federal officers, on the provision that self-issuing a warrant…

It seems that a 24/7 set of federal judges with smartphones on them for quickly processing warrant applications is a better fix to “warrants are slow” than giving cops the power to simply skip them when they feel like it.

As it stands now, the majority of federal search warrants contain easily falsified perjury, and yet they are still approved by judges almost without exception and the feds that wrote them suffer no consequences whatsoever.

I’m not sure why they have an issue with the current system, outside of blatant abuse.

Re: U.S. judge blocks Twitter's bid to reveal government surveillance requests

#133

Post by kaesar14 » Sat, Apr 18, 2020, 5:34 PM UTC

jsjddbbwj wrote: post #99

LatteLazy wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No wonder they wanted to replace Dorsey

Dorsey is a terrible, part time CEO.

Only CEO in Silicon Valley with any sense of decency and a spine

Re: U.S. judge blocks Twitter's bid to reveal government surveillance requests

#134

Post by sudosysgen » Sat, Apr 18, 2020, 5:48 PM UTC

frank2 wrote: post #82

sneak wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is national security other than the continued existence of a nation? Any other sub-existential attacks can accurately be classified as "crime", which is a police matter, for which we already have a legal framework. They have to inflate it into something big and scary otherwise people would say "hey, wait a minute, that's not constitutional..." Don't get it twisted: it's just a cover for domestic criminals inside…

For the past 7 years Ukraine has suffered from poor national security even though there has been very little risk of its ceasing to exist as an independent nation. Ditto Syria even though even if Assad's government had fallen, Syria would've almost certainly continued to exist as a nation.

Syria still exists as a nation, and if a significant amount of people in the US decided to stop being in the US for a good reason (say, the US becomes a murderous dictatorship), then they should have the right, same as any other citizen of any other country.

Re: U.S. judge blocks Twitter's bid to reveal government surveillance requests

#135

Post by rsync » Sat, Apr 18, 2020, 6:05 PM UTC

It's April now so that means this:

https://www.rsync.net/resources/notices/canary.txt

... is now 14 years old. This was the first warrant canary[1] and, I am sad to say, one of the few remaining ones.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warrant_canary#Usage

Re: U.S. judge blocks Twitter's bid to reveal government surveillance requests

#136

Post by mattmcknight » Sat, Apr 18, 2020, 6:05 PM UTC

m_a_g wrote: post #13

I wish there is a Twitter employee like Edward Snowden or Bradley Manning to leak those surveillance requests. Leaking documents seems to be the only way forward in the U.S.

If the employee was like Manning, they would just leak all of the DMs.

Re: U.S. judge blocks Twitter's bid to reveal government surveillance requests

#137

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Apr 18, 2020, 6:10 PM UTC

rsync wrote: post #135

It's April now so that means this: https://www.rsync.net/resources/notices/canary.txt ... is now 14 years old. This was the first warrant canary[1] and, I am sad to say, one of the few remaining ones. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warrant_canary#Usage

[deleted]

Re: U.S. judge blocks Twitter's bid to reveal government surveillance requests

#138

Post by codegladiator » Sat, Apr 18, 2020, 6:13 PM UTC

ken wrote: post #33

jsjddbbwj wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can stop using Twitter, you can't stop using your government.

Can you? By all accounts, you can’t stop Facebook. They’ll keep using you.

What do you mean ? I am not using facebook, and facebook is not using me. All their domains resolve to 0.0.0.0

Re: U.S. judge blocks Twitter's bid to reveal government surveillance requests

#139

Post by killIdeas » Sat, Apr 18, 2020, 6:16 PM UTC

nabla9 wrote: post #8

We learn from Snowden leaks that Twitter was the only major platform that refused to participate voluntarily with PRISM surveillance. Twitter only complied with legitimate FISA requests they were not able to refuse. Microsoft,Yahoo, Google, AOL, Skype and Apple all did more than legally required.

But Apple cares about our privacy. They said so in a commercial!

Re: U.S. judge blocks Twitter's bid to reveal government surveillance requests

#140

Post by bladegash » Sat, Apr 18, 2020, 6:19 PM UTC

hf8665 wrote: post #116

bladegash wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No judge wants to be responsible for a future terrorist attack or degrading intelligence capabilities against other foreign adversaries, regardless of whether the threats are real, perceived, and/or imagined. In this case, releasing the numbers might shine light into their capacity for investigations. In other words, sometimes security/capability gains more from perception than reality.

That was my explanation for awhile, but at some point the logic of the security arguments started to seem patently flawed. Also, judges seem to be ok with all sorts of judgments against domestic (state and federal) entities. It's almost as if when national security is mentioned, everything is thrown out the window. It's like a magic codeword or something and I don't understand the legal basis for it. You make a good…

I think the issue is we’re trying to explain something irrational (a fear that something might happen) with logic. Judges make similar judgements in protective/restraining order cases. They would rather err on the side of caution, because as someone else mentioned, the downside to allowing the invocation of national security has a perceived minimal downside (minor inconvenience), vs. the downside of a terrorist attack taking place is much more catastrophic. Anyways, don’t think anyone is wrong here, just some theories.